Starting with a long leather string but also a small bicycle wheel with handle was used, and even then electric starting was already employed. I have used one of those modern car electric start boxes myself.

Images

Thanks for the pics Reginald and the article snippets. I had used that cord method on boats a lot many years ago and even on a Kalt Baron RC helicopter many years ago too. If I remember correctly, I think Cox had a rip cord like starter for their Cox tether cars too. You slid in a length of plastic that looked like a plastic chain or ladder and it engaged some sprocket like teeth on the flywheel. When you pulled on the rip cord it spun the crank of course. But I could be mixing that memory up with some other kind of a toy car though.

That electric bump starter reminds me of the one I put together many years ago. The instructions wanted me to screw in a sheet metal screw into the flywheel hub for holding it on the motor shaft. I was using a Philips screwdriver and thinking that this is a bad idea. Yes it was a bad idea. The motor shaft and flywheel hub turned, the screwdriver slipped off and being under considerable pressure from my other hand, was driven in under the thumnail of my left thumb lifting it up. I jerked and the chair I was sitting in broke and I wound up laying flat on my back. My thumb hurt so much it was a little while before I realized I was on the floor. I still have the bump starter though, it does work much better as I drilled and tapped the hole for a regular 6x32 hex screw and it went together easily then.
Anyway, oh the memories.

During the late 1940's and into the 1950's tether cars and rail cars were hugely popular here in the USA too. But rail cars quickly went out of fashion, mainly due to the large and expensive tracks being used. Tether cars has something like 200 tracks in the 1940's all around the country. Now we are down to three fixed tracks and one portable track here in the USA. Of course it surprised me to find out about the large number of tether car collectors in Texas here, but we don't have a tether car track.

Tether boats is another story, I don't think it became very popular outside of the UK though.
But those high pressure, high temperature, super fast, flash steam tether boats are really impressive when you see them run. The UK guys seemingly were all making their own custom internal combustion engines to use in their boats too.

In the Netherlands I have never even heard of it before, never seen anything, nada, zilch. Never spoken to one of the oldies that "vaguely remembered somebody running them" or anything....
Either it was never really big in Europe, or my small country had a vacuum for this kind of modelling.

If I remember correctly, I think Cox had a rip cord like starter for their Cox tether cars too. You slid in a length of plastic that looked like a plastic chain or ladder and it engaged some sprocket like teeth on the flywheel. When you pulled on the rip cord it spun the crank of course. But I could be mixing that memory up with some other kind of a toy car though.

the cox RC cars had that. looked just like a zip-tie but with more pronounced teeth.